Radio evolution - ICS - Universidade do Minho

One Half of the Story: Radio Drama, Online Audio and Transmedia StorytellingCornelius ‘became aware’ of this process and was convinced that it was another part of the conspiracy againsthim. He rejected the audience’s claims, accusing each and every member of his audience of lying to him. Theaudience cannot contribute to the telling of his story because as far as he is concerned it is not a story, it is reallyhappening. 11 It is his life and if you want proof then you can contact him, or the people who have taken picturesof him or look at the news stories he has been involved in. You are not directly invited to contact him, he may noteven be in the mood to respond and not everything you say will directly affect the events that surround his life.The Flickerman is an interactive narrative where the characters, just like real people, don’t always want to interact,and when they do they can be moody, charming, manipulative, bitter, scheming or flirtatious. They are neverpredictable and their realm of correspondence is not limited to a particular application or forum, it extends acrossthe Internet. The immediacy of online writing allows macro-level issues and events to be woven into the unfoldingof Cornelius’ story; if it snows in the ‘real world’, if the stock market collapses or a new technology becomesavailable then the same things happen in The Flickerman and will have an impact. Local stories and more trivialincidents are amalgamated into the very fabric of the drama and seamlessly become part of the flow of thenarrative. 12The Flickerman fluidly blends the real and the imagined; it is played out in the edgelands of Internet andaims to create confusion about its intentions and identity. Audiences to the series appear to know, at aninstinctive level, that they are engaging with a work of fiction, but the invasive quality of the work is disturbingand disorientating. Theories have grown online about what The Flickerman really is, not concerned with the inworldplot but the source and production of the project itself. There are claims that it is a piece of corporatesponsorship, that it is Apple funded viral marketing, an elaborate recruitment campaign for the Australian secretservices or that it is an extended piece of applied creative research developed to explore the possibilities ofcreating a fiction in the realm where RL and virtual space meet. Cornelius Zane-Grey, of course, would deny allthese theories.www.dreadcentral.com - forums – topic: “Drawing Blood” (06.02.10)(Dreadcentral is a horror fan-site and on this thread the members are discussing the sharing of T-Shirt designs andfan art. Hooklam and Dudley are characters who have been searching for Cornelius since January 2010).arandomthought: Any chance on a shirt spawn in your style?YouGetNoArt4FreeFanBoys: Yeah right and can I also get a design of Dudley Moore spitting the work “Spam” atSpike from the Goons with that asswipe shill for the i_phone Apps who wrote the lines for Cornelius Flickermanstanding in the BG rubbing his hands in glee?HooklamandDudley: CZG? What do you know anything about where to find that filthy wasteral… you knowsomething about Mr Cornelius Zane-G don’t you? Go on… out with it boy… where is he?YouGetNoArt4FreeFanBoys: ... you want to know where he is? Simple. Like all co-funding and apps sponsoredPUTAS, he’s waiting for his check to be signed by the FlickrTwats and their co-pimps in the ‘cross-platform’ R&Ddepts. that have conned Mr. Jobs and the various “I dealerships” into thinking it was all a good idea.Online distribution and the Internet’s “Long Tail” open up possible avenues for writers who wish to exploreother approaches to radio drama. Initially the case of The Flickerman appears to present new and exciting modesfor the dissemination of radio drama, but the reality is that this is not a sustainable model of production. At themoment online audio drama will remain a niche form, away from public consciousness and from sources of11 This facade extends to interviews with the press I have carried out. For instance when I stated in The Age newspaper in Melbourne thatCornelius was my creation he responded with a tirade of abuse posted on his web site.12 Cornelius’ prequel blog details his fraught working relationship with a Dutch artist and their attempt to create installation piece that involvesfloating a 3 meter plastic Lego Man across the English channel. Their scheme ends in failure, with the figurine washing up on a local beach thenext day, an incident is detailed on the BBC’s website and various other online media sources. The blog was written after the event and theentries backdated to give the impression that they were created in the days leading to the news story. This has caused debate in The Flickermancommunity about who exactly was responsible for the incident and its meaning.ECREA: ‘Radio Evolution: technology, content, audiences – conference 2011 | 345